The EU budget bolsters Europe’s technological leadership: the European Chips Act
In a nutshell
Funded by the EU budget, the European Chips Act helps build up the EU’s semiconductor ecosystem. This will strengthen the EU’s research and technological leadership which will reinforce its capacity to innovate in the design, manufacturing, and packaging of advanced chips. It will ensure Europe meets its digital decade target of doubling its global market share in semiconductors to 20%.
The role of the EU budget
The European Chips Act shows how the EU budget contributes to building Europe’s strategic autonomy in key technologies to make Europe less reliant on third countries.
The EU budget is supporting the Chips for Europe Initiative with a total of up to €3.3 billion, including €1.65 billion via the Horizon Europe programme and €1.65 billion via the Digital Europe programme. This comes in addition to the budget already dedicated to activities in microelectronics under the long-term EU budget of almost €5 billion between 2021 and 2027. Member States are also encouraged to use Recovery and Resilience Facility funding towards the goals of the European Chips Act, see an example from Italy here.
In total, more than €43 billion of policy-driven investment will support the Chips Act until 2030, which will be broadly matched by long-term private investment.
More details – results achieved
Start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs are getting direct support under the European Chips Act, through a combination of new and repurposed funding. This includes the funding sources mentioned above but also loans by the European Investment Bank – which already financed semiconductor projects with €1.9 billion from 2018-2022, mobilising €5.8 billion of investments.
In addition to individual support for companies, initiatives intended to help the whole start-up ecosystem will reinforce the effects of the European Chips Act. There will be a cloud-based virtual design platform, bringing together a wide range of design libraries, tools and support services, which should lower the costs for start-ups hoping to enter the semiconductor market. A network of competence centres will be set up across Europe, to address the shortage of trained staff and students interested in entering the field.
